Dork-winism

Picture this:  there's a neighborhood park a mere two blocks away from my house here in LA.  It's one where people gather.  There are tennis courts, basketball courts, playground, and a small baseball field.  Kids run around, teens loiter.  I go and run the sidewalks around it, because I don't like having to waste energy on watching for cars.  Running requires enough of that.

So last week, I am running laps around this park and I see a group of tweens standing about in my path.  There are a few boys and a few girls, about the age of 12.  I spot one in particular from a block away.  She's physically predictable.  Her legs are gangly and her hips narrow.  Her shirt-front is undisrupted and she carries just the last bit of baby fat in her cheeks.

But she is not like her friends who exist with her upon that sidewalk.  She stands jauntily on one foot.  She twirls her hair through her fingers absent-mindedly, but in a way that makes her magnetic to the little boys (and hell, me!) she speaks to.  She giggles.

It was just in a mere moment that I noticed all of these things, but the greater impact was this: as I ran past her and her group of adorers, I understand that she must have just been born with that.  Some people are just genetically predisposed to smolder.  Some people just know how to attract people.  This little girl was just that, a little girl, and yet she carried more feminine wiles in her sparkly purple fingernails than I, in my fully-functioning-developed-adult-woman-body.

And now, I think I understand evolution.